


Of Midnight Coffee Runs & Probably Illegal Mansions

by QueenofStarlight



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-14
Updated: 2018-02-14
Packaged: 2019-03-18 09:00:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,175
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13678506
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/QueenofStarlight/pseuds/QueenofStarlight
Summary: Lance moves into the apartment across the hall from Keith. They become friends. Mysteries arise, and are solved.T for Strong Language





	Of Midnight Coffee Runs & Probably Illegal Mansions

**Author's Note:**

  * For [jameswlwbarnes](https://archiveofourown.org/users/jameswlwbarnes/gifts).



> This is for an among-friends Valentine's Exchange, a gift for my dear friend Mel!! You said you wanted a fantasy AU and I already had ideas for this but needed a reason to write it (because we all know I have a million and one other AUs I need to finish before I can justify starting a new one) so I decided to do urban fantasy! I'm pretty proud of how it turned out, and I may expand on this universe in other fics later on. Much later on. I have too many fics I need to complete. ANYWAYS!! Happy Valentine's Day Mel!! Hope you enjoy your gift owo

The first time Keith sees his beautiful blue-eyed neighbor, it’s nearly two in the morning, pitch black and raining outside, and absolutely the last time of day he’d expect anyone to move into the apartment next door. Yet, there he is, wearing blue plaid pajama pants and a faded grey Sharks Hockey Team hoodie over Converse with holes in the toes, hair tousled and bags under his eyes, carrying half-crushed cardboard boxes up the stairs instead of using the elevator like a sensible person. And even years later, Keith doesn’t understand why he remembers every minute detail of that night when he can’t seem to keep track of the last time he’d eaten on any particular day.

Keith doesn’t actually speak to the man that first time. He catches barely a glimpse of him, while he’s heading into the elevator and Keith’s heading out of it, on his way to the store to buy coffee because Pidge had apparently forgotten to buy some and was too busy deciphering old runes to go out and get some herself, and Keith gives little more thought to the unfamiliar face than, _‘Why the fuck is he moving into a new apartment at two in the goddamn morning?!’_

(In hindsight, Keith thinks he should’ve at least offered to help - he’d caught sight of the mountain of boxes in the open car sitting out front when he’d walked into the drizzle, and he hadn’t seen the man with an umbrella - but apparently he’d been too concerned with keeping Pidge from passing out to care.)

The second time Keith sees the man is the next day, when he goes downstairs to check his mail at 2 PM because he’d slept in past noon but couldn’t bother to wait until he’d woken up fully. He’s stepping into the elevator with the rent notice in his hand - something which always makes Keith laugh, since he doesn’t actually live in the physical apartment, just uses the front door as a Gate to Allura’s magic mansion that sits in its own dimension - and the man steps in a few floors below the one Keith’s home is on.

The man smiles so warmly and genuinely that Keith can’t help the heat in his chest, and as the elevator doors slide shut, Keith finds himself accepting the hand offered to him with a tentative grip that hasn’t touched anyone he doesn’t live with for as long as he can remember.

It leaves a tingling in his hand when they pull away and Keith does his best to ignore it.

“Hey, the name’s Lance! Just moved in last night. I think I saw you when I was bringing boxes in? I was dead tired, so I’m sorry I didn’t introduce myself then. You are?” He asks, seamlessly, not having to pause even a microsecond to think of what to say.

“Keith,” Keith replies curtly. “And yeah, I saw you last night too, but I was distracted by a desire for coffee.” He twiddles his thumbs nervously, the one hand still tingling.

Lance rocks back and forth from the balls of his feet to the heels, hands now shoved deep in his pockets and a small smirk playing on his lips. “Coffee at 2am? Sounds like you’re an interesting person.”

That pulls a snort out of Keith. “Not really. The coffee’s for my friend, mostly, ‘cause she tends to use it as a means of avoiding sleep for days on end.”

“Oh, you have a roommate? Nice.” Lance says, sounding intrigued.

Keith fights the urge to correct Lance from ‘a roommate’ to ‘several roommates’ and instead nods in agreement, because it actually is nice having roommates. It’s impossible to be lonely when he lives with enough people to where there’s always at least one other person in the house. Before he has to try and think of a response, the elevator is rumbling to a stop again, the old-fashioned dial pointing to the fifth floor as the doors open with a mechanic ding and both Keith and Lance step out.

They look to each other, and Lance chuckles, Keith allowing a small smile. “Which apartment is yours?” Lance asks jokingly, gesturing down the short hall holding only two doors.

“The one that you don’t live in, genius.”

Lance chuckles again. It’s a soft, melodic sound, as warm as Lance’s smile and making Keith’s ears tingle the way his fingers still do from their handshake in the elevator. He pushes away the thoughts of perhaps getting to hear more of that chuckle and the ideas his imagination is feeding him of just how he might go about it. Clutching his mail behind his back and moving to stand in front of his door, Lance mirroring him across the hall, Keith lets out a sigh.

“Guess I’ll see you around then, neighbor?” Lance says.

“Yeah, definitely.” Keith replies.

He watches Lance disappear into his apartment - tries not to overthink the man’s hesitation - and waits until he hears Lance’s front door lock before he heads into his own apartment. After all, he can’t afford to let anyone see into his home. It would bring up questions he just can’t answer.  


Keith catches Lance in the lobby four times in the next week, and starts to recognize a pattern in the man’s routine. He learns from Lance directly that he’s a morning person, always gets up at six to do an ‘extensive beauty routine’ before he has to work. He learns Lance is a barista at the Starbucks that sits five blocks away from their apartment building, learns he moved into his own apartment because it was closer to his job than his family home is, learns he’d worked six hours of overtime and that’s why he was moving in at 2 AM instead of 8 PM.

During their short conversations in the elevator and lobby, Keith learns that Lance has two older siblings and three younger, and that he loves them more than anything else in the world. He learns that Lance is a people person, that he adores the satisfied look on people’s faces when he makes a joke while taking their order or compliments them, that he can never bear to leave a person alone when they look down in the dumps. He learns that Lance is kind, kinder than most of the people Keith has had the pleasure - and displeasure - of meeting.

(Except Hunk, of course, because Keith doubts it’s possible for anyone to be more whole-heartedly kind than Hunk, not including Hunk’s girlfriend Shay. It’s too close to tell.)

Keith finds himself despairing one night over the fact he’s shared little about himself with Lance, and he despairs more when he realizes there’s little he actually _can_ share of himself without putting his identity (and comfortable friendship with Lance) in jeopardy. Any detailed truth about his job, his chosen family, his hobbies - any of it would be cause for suspicion on Lance’s part, which is sure to make their friendship (is this a friendship if they’ve known each other a week and spoken only six times for twenty minutes or less?) strained, if not completely broken.

And so Keith lies. Not in huge ways, no. He bends the truth just enough that it seems normal from an outsider’s perspective. And Lance never seems to doubt him, even for a split second.

He tells Lance about his friends, bending their jobs to integrate into real-world parallels of what they all actually do for work. He talks about Pidge and her love for learning new things, her skill in hacking and her need for coffee 24/7. He talks about Shiro’s love of history and ancient proverbs (leaving out the fact that he’s interested it in it specifically because “humans are fascinating”) and how he’s constantly running into Keith’s room with some new quote he’s read in some old book.

He tells Lance about Coran’s intense pet collection, a slip-up that leads to Keith frantically trying to think up an explanation and saying Coran has at least ten different kinds of lizards. Which isn’t really a lie in and of itself, because dragons are the fantasy equivalent of lizards, aren’t they?

He tells Lance about Hunk, the world’s best chef and kindest human being on the planet (again, not including his girlfriend Shay, because she’s Too Pure), and Lance is so enamored by the idea of having a friend that’s super good at cooking that Keith is tempted to invite Lance to meet Hunk somehow. He tells Lance about Shay’s ventures in medical science (the easiest one to translate over, because what else could healing spells be translated into?) and how she and Hunk are by far the cutest couple he’s ever seen, simply because they’re so undeniably _in love_.

It isn’t until they’ve hit the two-week mark in their Elevator Conversations, when Lance mentions Pidge outright - asking if she works from home, because Keith _did_ say she’s his roommate, which was probably a mistake considering she doesn’t use the same Gate he does - that Keith remembers he’d been using aliases for all his friends, but not himself.

The realization alone is enough to put Keith in a panic, because despite his constant caution and all-around anti-social behavior towards everyone he has to talk to for whatever reason, he’d used his real name with Lance without even hesitating or noticing he was introducing himself wrongly. And it isn’t like Keith knows many people under his current alias, but Lance lives across the hall from him, has the same landlady as him, could totally blow his cover if he were to mention Keith to her as _Keith_ and not the name he’d written on his rent papers.

And while it wouldn’t be hard for Keith to just have Allura take down his Gate and move it onto a different door in a different apartment building, Keith _likes_ Lance. He doesn’t want to leave.

And so, instead of trying to think up a way to ask Lance to call him by his alias _without_ raising suspicion, Keith says that Pidge does indeed work at home but is actually on a trip to visit her big brother, and bids his neighbor goodbye, silently praying that Lance wouldn’t mention him to anyone he might know.

  
  
  


Since Lance had started working again the day after he’d moved into his new apartment (the day after, because he’d moved in at 2 AM, so technically the first time Keith had spoken to him was that same day), Keith had easily found a way to change up his schedule to make sure he had a believable reason to be down in the lobby every day when Lance got home from his twelve hour shift. It had taken a couple nights of awkward half-assed excuses and a good deal of thinking, but he ended up buying a membership at the gym down the street and changing over from working out in Allura’s personal gym to working out there from 6 PM ‘till Lance got off at 8.

(When asked, Keith told his coven it was because the gym had a kickboxing class he wanted to try, though he’s about 99% sure they don’t actually believe him._

Keith enjoys the privacy for his workouts - not that he didn’t already have it, considering most of the time he worked out at absolutely ridiculous hours of the night - but it was still an excuse, and he felt a little bad about lying to his coven. Even if they didn’t believe him anyways.

Keith and Lance’s lobby-elevator-hallway conversations continue, and Keith finds himself walking slower through the building in an effort to prolong the moment (though he pointedly _doesn’t_ take notice of the fact Lance is doing the same). He learns that Lance has always wanted a dog, a Great Dane, specifically, but his family home is too full already and he knows he isn’t at home enough to properly care for a pet. Keith talks about his cat, Red, and how he found her as a stray (not entirely a lie, though _technically_ , Red found him).

One night Lance has a set of questions prepared, and they share mundane things like their favorite colors (red and blue), favorite animals (hippos and sharks), and whether or not they like pineapple pizza, to which Keith says yes and is given an incredibly offended look from Lance. He raises an eyebrow and Lance just shakes his head, a smile forming on his face despite the appearance of disgust.

Keith learns, through an awkward exchange regarding a faint lipstick mark on Lance’s cheek, that Lance is bisexual, and single. Apparently the lipstick mark was from a coworker who kissed him as thanks for a birthday present he’d gotten her. Lance doesn’t ask about Keith’s sexuality, and Keith comes to respect him a tad bit more simply because of that, though in the end he does tell Lance he’s gay and single and hasn’t been in a relationship in a very long time.

That conversation lingers in Keith’s head for the next couple of nights. The realization that they’re both single repeatedly smashes against his cranium like a pet desperately trying to be noticed, and he hates that he can’t get the thought to go away, because he’s never had such little control over his thoughts before. At least that he can remember. Thoughts of Lance keep him awake at night: his laugh, his smile, his complete trust in what Keith tells him - all of it.

It doesn’t help that Keith can’t go to his coven for advice. He can’t go to them, and he can’t go to Lance, and he doesn’t know anyone else, so what the fuck is there to do?

  
  
  


Lance has always been weak for beautiful people. Not in a perverted sense, no- but seeing a girl with her makeup on fleek, or a boy with perfectly styled hair...it makes his heart swell. He knows they probably put so much effort into their appearance, knows it so well, and the fact it turned out so nicely makes him happy for everyone he passes. He loves complimenting people too, loves to see their pleased faces turn pink, see the secret dimples that comes out with their smiles.

Keith has dimples, and Lance is fucking _weak_ for those dimples.

He doesn’t know quite what it is about Keith, but there’s something almost familiar about him that Lance really can’t pinpoint. He just feels comfortable around Keith. It’s as if he’s met Keith before (doubtful, because Keith is attractive as Hell, and Lance doesn’t forget faces easily), but no matter how hard Lance wracks his brain for answers, there’s none to be found.

It doesn’t help when they actually get on the topic of sexuality one day. It isn’t like Lance isn’t open about being bi- he makes no effort to hide it or avoid the subject. But he’d expected Keith to be a little more reserved about it. His hunch was right, in the end, but Keith still opened up to him. And learning Keith is gay makes his heart stutter, which he definitely _hadn’t_ expected. At all.

Lance spends a good part of that night thinking about that particular conversation, and when he looks at the grand scheme of things, Keith’s really the only person in his life he’d even _consider_ getting involved with, and it’s not just because Keith’s attractive. He’s entertaining with his blank reactions to Lance’s stupid jokes, cute with the blush that reaches his ears when Lance flirts- and Lance _does_ flirt, quite a lot, though Keith never acknowledges it outside that telltale blush.

Keith is his friend, his only friend. Or at least the only one Lance actually spends time with.

But is he actually _in love_ with Keith? Lance can’t really tell; he’s not had the most amazing luck in the dating world. The few times he’s asked people out he’s ended up regretting it when he realizes he mistook wanting affection for being in love with someone. It had taken an explanation from his mom on platonic affection and general attraction for Lance to actually understand it. But all in all, his relationships didn’t end too well, and from what he’s been told, Keith’s haven’t either.

Lance is still pondering how the fuck to deal with this particular...issue? Is it really an issue? This particular dilemma, maybe- when he hears meowing. Loud meowing. _Very_ loud meowing.

He checks the window that opens onto the fire escape and finds nothing, checks all the rooms in his apartment just to make sure no one’s cat wandered in behind him when he got home. Again, he finds nothing. The meowing continues, and Lance follows it to his front door, and finds a black cat with red streaks in its fur and brilliant violet eyes the same shade as Keith’s. Lance watches the cat’s tail twitch as it stands, walking across the hallway to sit down in front of Keith’s door.

“Oh,” He mumbles, smiling. “You must be Red. You’re Keith’s cat, aren’t you?”

He doesn’t expect an answer, but something in the way the cat inclines its head makes it seem like she’s affirming his assumptions.

Lance shuffles over to Red - he assumes the cat’s name is Red, because Keith said he had a cat named Red, and why else would there be a cat meowing outside Keith’s door if it wasn’t Keith’s cat? - and raps lightly on the door. He almost falls into Keith’s apartment as the door swings open, apparently not having been shut all the way, and Red trots silently into the front hall.

The front hall that looks absolutely nothing like the front hall of Lance’s apartment.

Lance glances back through his own open door to double-check, and sure enough, his own hall is short and thin with plain white walls and ugly beige tiling. Keith’s hall isn’t even a hall at all, really; it’s a huge room. The flooring is a beautiful dark wood that looks perfectly polished, the walls painted forest green, and a few feet in front of Lance is a long balcony with wrought iron railing that looks down onto what he assumes is a sitting room of sorts. To Lance’s left lie four other doors identical to the one he just came out of, which has a sign on it that reads: “Keith, New York”. When Lance looks closer, he finds that the other four doors also have signs on them.

To the right, he finds another door, this one bigger than the others, a dial in the shape of a globe on the front of it. He reaches out a hand to touch it, but then Red is meowing in the loud, needy way Lance has come to associate with cats. He finds her standing at the end of the hall, looking back at him as if she were waiting for him to follow. He hesitates. Is it really okay to go wandering in someone else’s home uninvited? (He tries not to think about the fact that the home in question is definitely in some sort of separate dimension.) But it’s Keith’s home, and he knows Keith, so surely it can’t be _that_ bad. And if it is...well, at least he’ll have a funny story to tell his customers.

Lance follows Red, walking slowly to read the signs on the doors: Pidge & Matt, Phoenix. Shiro, Tokyo. Hunk, Kailua-Kona. Shay, Algiers. ‘Names and places,” Lance muses. “That couldn’t be more mysterious.’

The hall ends at a wrought iron spiral staircase which leads down into a cluttered kitchen. There are eight burners on the stovetop and a ridiculously massive oven underneath, and when Lance peeks through the glass, it looks to be baking some kind of pottery. Five of the eight burners have pots on top of them with contents at varying stages of boiling- one of them looks like it might boil over at any moment, but Red hisses at Lance when he goes to turn down the heat, so he pulls his hand back and returns to the feline’s side.

Except when the turns to follow Red, there’s suddenly a woman standing there, arms crossed over her chest, looking at him with an expression he can’t quite place.

And, of course, the first thing Lance blurts out is, “Are you the coffee roommate?”

The woman raises an eyebrow, and for a moment Lance thinks he might have offended her, but then she laughs, high and light, and smiles at him almost comfortingly. “No, that would be Pidge.”

‘Pidge?’ Lance remembers the name from a sign on one of the doors, but now that he knows it’s a name, he wonders if ‘Pidge’ is one of Keith’s friends. He doesn’t remember Keith telling him of anyone named Pidge, but then again, he really hasn’t known Keith for that long, has he?

“My name is Allura. You are?” The woman - Allura - asks, one arm now resting on her hip.

“Lance, I’m Lance McClain.” He replies.

“And what are you doing in our house, Lance McClain?”

“I uh, followed Keith’s cat? At least I hope it’s Keith’s cat. He told me he has a cat and there was a cat meowing outside his door, so I assumed it was his cat, but I wanted to make sure. And that’s why I’m wandering around your house. I’m tryna find Keith.”

Lance makes a conscious effort to stop his rambling before it gets out of control, and from the look on Allura’s face, his answer isn’t all that intriguing. She doesn’t look surprised at all, actually.

“Well, I am afraid Keith is out at the moment. How about you take a seat? I will make some tea for us, we can have a little chat while you wait.” She says, waving one hand toward the sitting room underneath the balcony of doors. “I think Keith will be glad to know you came.”

Lance takes her word for it and finds his way over to the couches. They’re a pale rose color, and look vintage, but when he sits down, they feel plush and comfortable and not like they might fall apart. Allura follows only seconds later with a delicate tea set on a neon orange plastic tray that doesn’t match the decor of the house at all. Lance forces down a smile and takes a moment to wonder how the hell she had tea ready so fast, though it’s possible it was already prepared; there _were_ several things cooking on the stove in the kitchen, last he checked.

Allura sits with her back straight and one leg crossed over the other, the perfect picture of poise, as she sips her tea and politely looks out a window off to the side. Lance copies her and sips his own tea (it tastes vaguely of rose, but also of something he doesn’t recognize), his gaze landing on the window as well. It looks out on a beach, the sand a dark brown and the water a deep blue, heavy grey clouds hovering above the waves. It looks rather cold and uninviting.

He’s starting to wonder if perhaps he should say something when he hears a voice sound from a hallway off the kitchen, from which he assumes Allura appeared. He’s half into his next sip of tea when a short girl with brownish-blonde hair and round glasses comes around a corner with a fat book in her hands, saying something about runes and translations, and pauses at the sight of him.

“Who the fuck are you?” She says, turning to Allura. “Who the fuck is he?”

She says it so intensely that Lance actually chokes on his tea, and he carefully sets the cup and saucer down on the coffee table before turning to look disappointedly at the mess on his shirt. Allura hands him a cloth handkerchief and he takes it with a polite thanks, though it’s really not good for much except wiping the excess tea off his chin. He doesn’t know whether to give Allura the handkerchief back or not, so he folds it and awkwardly sets it on the orange tray.

“A guest.” Allura says curtly, apparently in reply to Glasses-Girl’s question.

“Wait, wait a minute-” Glasses-Girl punctuates her phrase with a wave of her finger. “You said we could never let any human in here ever, and yet you’re sitting here with a _stranger_ drinking tea?!”

“Hey, I said _you_ all were banned from bringing humans in. This is my mansion, I get to choose which of the rules I set actually apply to me.” There’s a smug look on Allura’s face, and Lance loves it. He can see himself getting along well with her.

Glasses-Girl’s brow knit together and Lance can’t help but feel like she’s suspicious of him, and he can see why she would be, but at the same time he resents the hostility in her expression.

“So you let him in then? I thought you didn’t know anyone on the outside.” Glasses-Girl asks..

“Nope.” Allura replies, popping the ‘p’. “I never said he was _my_ guest.”

“Then how the hell did he even get in?”

“Red led him in. He said he found her meowing outside his door, and that when he came to let her into Keith’s apartment, the door was open, and he wanted to make sure she was Keith’s cat and not someone else’s.” Allura explains, taking another long sip of her tea.

Glasses-Girl turns to look at him, her book now snapped shut with one finger stuck between the pages as a bookmark, arms crossed and eyebrows raised the same way Allura had been when she first caught him loitering in her kitchen. “You just...followed a cat into the house of someone you only just met?” She says, sounding incredulous.

“Uh, yes?” Lance picks absently at a hangnail. “Is that weird?”

“For a normal human? Yeah, I’d say that’s pretty weird.” Lance tries not to think too hard on the obvious use of the word ‘human’. He’s not sure he wants to know.

Glasses-Girl looks like she’s about to say something more, but the sound of a door opening and closing catches everyone’s attention, three sets of eyes snapping to the balcony-hall. Lance has to resist sighing in relief at the sight of Keith, though it isn’t hard, because resisting his sigh turns into resisting almost every reaction he could possibly have to seeing Keith shirtless, in bright red swimming shorts, a towel draped around his shoulders and his mullet pulled up into a ponytail.

He’s fucking _hot_ , and Lance now has to rethink his earlier doubts about his attraction to Keith.

There’s another guy next to him who is the spitting image of Glasses-Girl, literally exactly the same face but slightly more masculine and with slightly longer hair that’s slightly less of a mess. Lance thinks back to the signs on the doors and guesses that these two must be Pidge and Matt, though who’s who is anyone’s guess. Except not because everyone else already knows.

Keith pulls the door shut behind him - it is the door labeled ‘Pidge & Matt’, Lance can tell because he remembers it being the second door in the row - and is saying something to the guy (Pidge or Matt?) when Allura clears her throat, and then he’s looking at them, at _Lance_.

“...Lance?” He says, leaning over the railing as if trying to discern whether it’s _actually_ Lance or just a figment of his imagination. Then he fumbles about, pulling a shirt out of seemingly nowhere and hurriedly putting it on. It’s backwards, but no one mentions it. “What are you doing here?”

Literally everyone Lance has seen in the past twenty minutes has asked him that exact question.

“I followed your cat.” He replies, pointing almost accusingly at Red.

“You followed my cat.” Keith deadpans.

“Yeah! She was meowing in the hall and your door was open!”

“And he was not sure if Red was your cat, so he decided to come in and find you to ask.” Allura finishes for him, gingerly setting her teacup and saucer down and standing.

Keith and Pidge-or-Matt make their way down the stairs, and Allura and Glasses-Girl move to meet them. Lance follows, thinking it’d be awkward if he stayed sitting when everyone else was huddled around each other, most likely talking about him. Keith is actually sheepish, an expression Lance never would’ve expected to see on him. Sure, he was awkward, but ‘easily intimidated’ is the last thing that comes to mind when Lance thinks about Keith Kogane.

“Where were you two all day, anyway?” Glasses-Girl questions.

“An empty beach somewhere along the coast of California. Nyma, Rolo, and Lotor’s gang invited me to play volleyball, and everyone else who _plays_ volleyball was busy today, so I brought Keith.” Pidge-or-Matt explains, gesturing to the plastic beach volleyball tucked under his arm. “I know you don’t play sports, Pidgeon, and it’s not like Allura can actually leave the mansion, so…”

The nickname ‘Pidgeon’ is directed at Glasses-Girl, so Lance assumes her name is Pidge.

“Oh, we should have those ladies over sometime, I have not seen them in ages!” Allura says with a wistful smile. “Did you win? Or did Lotor’s crew embarrass you again?”

Matt looks like he’s about to answer, and from the look on his face, Lance guesses he’s about to tell her they lost, but Keith intervenes. “Why are we talking about volleyball when we should be addressing…” He gestures vaguely to Lance. “ _...this?_ ”

Lance is really starting to hate being the center of attention, which is a first for him.

“Wait, you said we weren’t allowed to have humans in the house!” Matt says, sounding insulted.

“ _You’re_ human.” Keith says, giving him a pointed look.

“Yeah, but Pidge is my sister, and she isn’t. Seriously, though! It isn’t fair for you to be able to have your human neighbor in here when I can’t let Nyma in! And she’s an insider, too!”

“First of all, Matthew, there is more to Lance being here than meets the eye.” Allura easily shuts him down. “And secondly, Nyma is not banned from the mansion because she is human, she is banned because when you _did_ bring her in, she stole tomes from my personal library and we had to use very taxing finding spells in order to track her down and get them back.”

Matt looks properly chastised, and Lance stifles a giggle. Keith is staring at him when he breaks his gaze away from enjoying Matt’s demise. It’s _intense_.

“How did he get in?” Keith asks, his voice quiet, stern. He looks to Allura.

“What do you mean, he said the door was left open, which was obviously your fault-”.

“No, not that,” Keith interrupts Pidge, shooting her a look. “I mean that he shouldn’t have been able to pass through the doorway at all, even if the door itself was open. All he should’ve found is a badly-furnished apartment identical to his. Humans can’t come in here unless there’s a witch with them.”

“Oh!” Lance exclaims, grabbing everyone’s attention. “You guys are witches!”

Everyone seems a little sheepish, the way Keith was when he came in shirtless and saw Lance watching him, though with less embarrassment and more awkward confirmation.

“Well, everything makes way more sense now. God, I’m an idiot. How else would I be in some alternate-dimensional mansion with magic doors and shit?”

Keith’s still staring at him, now incredulously. “I don’t follow.”

Lance sighs. “My mom’s a witch.”

A second passes, and then chaos erupts. Everyone’s talking at once, except for Keith, who’s just staring at Lance with vague surprise and what almost looks like relief.

“If he’s part witch, it would totally make sense that he could come through the barrier, but if his dad’s human it would mean he doesn’t have enough magical power to be noticed by other witches!” Pidge says, now looking excited rather than guarded. “It’s just like me!”

“This would also explain how he is able to see Red. Only a witch has the capability to notice her.” Allura adds.

Matt groans at that. “Yeah, it’s really annoying. She keeps knocking shit off my shelves!”

They all continue on for a little bit - well, mostly Pidge and Matt, shooting things back and forth at each other and complaining about Keith’s cat - and then Allura clears her throat, cutting off their rambling conversation.

“Lance,” She asks. “Do you have a coven?”

“I’m gonna say no, because I don’t actually know what that means.” Lance replies.

“A coven is a group of witches - and at times, their human relatives-” She gestures to Matt. “-who live together as a family to protect each other from other covens who would do them harm. They teach each other spells which one excels in but another does not.”

“Basically it’s a giant study group, but eternal. And you have to live with your group mates.” Pidge says. Lance gets it.

“What I mean to ask is,” Allura smiles welcomingly. “Would you like to join our coven, Lance?”

Everyone pauses. Pidge looks confused, Matt looks intrigued, Keith looks downright shocked. It’s like what Allura proposed is something that never happens - and it very well might be. It’s been a solid month since he finally chose to leave home, and he knows he could never really leave his family behind, but Pidge and Matt prove to him that he can be a part of this without having to be completely on his own. He could still have his family. And at the same time, he could have _Keith_.

“I would love that.” Lance answers, smiling from ear to ear.

  
  
  


That night, after the other coven members have returned home and been introduced to Lance, they all gather in the sitting room so Lance can get to know them, and vice versa. Pidge and Hunk quickly latch onto him, as the two of them were the ones Keith happened to tell him the most about - which they tease Keith about - while Shiro watches them interact with a fond smile on his face. Matt and Coran interrupt at times with something quirky to add, and Shay matches Shiro, shooting Keith a knowing look when Lance tells her she’d been referred to as a goddess.

Keith sits back, watching, relieved that his new friend so easily gets along with his found family. A part of him tries to dwell on all the different things that could go wrong because of this development, but the part of him that’s happy shoves those thoughts down.

Allura appears at his side halfway into the night, and Keith turns to her, curious.

“Why did you invite him to join our coven? You barely know him, and you’re not the most trusting person in the world.” He says. “So what made you want to invite him?”

Loud laughter sounds from across the room, and their gazes are on that for a moment, Lance having snorted tea out his nose over something someone said.

“Being stuck in this house all day, every day, I try to find ways to entertain myself. One of them is watching the world through your eyes. All of you.” Allura explains, smiling softly. “I get to see how all of you look at things, your perspectives. I saw Lance McClain through your eyes. I saw him the way you saw him, felt your feelings toward him as intensely as if they were my own.”

Keith looks at Allura, and Allura looks at Keith, a silent communication.

“I know you do not feel that way for just anyone, Keith. Lance is special to you. And I sense a lot of potential in him. He has more strength than I think even he realizes.”

“You invited him into our coven so you could try and tap into his magical power?” Keith gives her a flat look.

Allura laughs. “Yes, I did. But I also invited him because I know you would never pursue him if he was ‘just a human’. And I know you want to. So I simply gave you two a reason to try.”

Keith doesn’t say anything in response. Allura pats him on the shoulder and returns to the sitting room, taking her place beside Shiro and kissing his cheek when he turns to smile at her. Lance is listening intently to something Pidge is explaining, possibly about runes, judging by the book she’s holding, and for a second, his gaze meets Keith’s. And he smiles a smile Keith can’t help but think might be reserved for him, because it sends shivers up his spine a way nothing ever does.

Lance turns his attention back to Pidge, and another second passes before Keith pushes off the wall he’s leaning on, letting out a sigh as he takes a seat on the floor next to Pidge and Lance.

“So, what’re you guys talking about?”

**Author's Note:**

> This is technically posted late so it isn't beta read all the way, so if there are mistakes please tell me ; w ;


End file.
